The art of assembling and arranging a number of primary packages such as beverage type containers into secondary packaging, often called multipackaging, is an extensive art resulting from the ever changing, and often conflicting demands and needs of beverage producers, distributors, retail stores, and consumers. A secondary packaging solution that could meet the demands and needs of all concerned is a virtual impossibility, but at least partial solutions are often developed and improvements repeatedly sought.
The subject invention is one new and unique solution to the demands and needs of secondary packaging. The invention particularly relates to that area of the art of packaging where beverage type single-service containers such as cans of soft drinks and beer are multipackaged as six-packs, twelve-packs and twenty-four-packs. For various reasons, six-packs are often combined as twelve-packs, and twelve-packs as twenty-four-packs. In the beverage production and distribution segment of the art the common basic unit is twenty four containers, and that unit is called a case. When the case is a retail store item it is commonly packaged as a six-sided box of twenty four loose cans. To maintain the case unit where the intended retail store item is to be a twelve-pack or six-pack, a shallow tray is most often used by the beverage producers and distributors. In those trays, the six-sided case pattern of the cans is maintained, and that pattern is an array of upstanding cans of four columns and six rows. In the packages of cases or trays, the cans are maintained upright in handling and storage because the cans are relatively weak against vertical stacking forces when disposed on their sides. Thus such trays commonly carry two twelve-packs or four six-packs in a side-by-side relationship.